Newsgroups: rec.sport.pro-wrestling
From: hekunze@jeeves.uwaterloo.ca (Herb Kunze)
Subject: Wrestling TidBits - 02/11
Message-ID:
Sender: news@watdragon.uwaterloo.ca (USENET News System)
Organization: University of Waterloo
Date: Thu, 11 Feb 1993 15:37:46 GMT
Lines: 181
- Major shake-up at WCW, with most things already being mentioned on the
net. Here's what I've read/heard:
- Bill Watts has been demoted. I mentioned in a post not long ago that
Watts, exec vice prez of wrestling operations, was also the head of
WCW's booking committee. Not only did he have final say on all bookings,
but he did all the contract work. From what I understand, he's no
longer exec vice prez (which I guess means that he'll have nothing
to do with contracts and WCW rules), but he will still be part of
the booking committee.
- WCW will use a 16-man booking committee. Let's see. There's
Bill Watts, Dusty Rhodes, Jim Ross, Ric Flair, Mike Graham,
Larry Zbyszko, Ole Anderson, Bill Dundee, Greg Gagne. Maybe
Bob Dhue and Bill Shaw will sit in. Eddie Gilbert? I dunno,
I can't come up with 16.
- Tony Schiavone will take Jim Ross' place on WCW Saturday Night.
- Eric Bischoff will take Jim Ross' place on WCW Main Event.
- WCW has SuperBrawl III on 02/21/93 from Asheville, NC. The announced
line-up is:
- Sting vs. Big Van Vader in a strap match
- Great Muta vs. Barry Windham for the NWA Title
- Erik Watts & Marcus Bagwell vs. Brian Pillman & Steve Austin
- Cactus Jack vs. Paul Orndorff with falls counting anywhere
- Dustin Rhodes vs. Ron Simmons for the US Title
- Rock'n'Roll Express vs. Wrecking Crew
- Chris Benoit vs. 2 Cold Scorpio
- Davey Boy Smith vs. (unannounced)
- Ric Flair appears
Talk still has the R'n'R Express facing the Heavenly Bodies at the
PPV and not he Wrecking Crew.
I have no idea what's going on with Pillman & Austin. Over the past
weeks, I had listed them against Steamboat & Douglas for the tag titles,
with a 2 out of 3 falls match being the obvious blow-off for their feud.
Suddenly they are announced as facing the "rookie sensations". Maybe
there's an injury that we don't know about, maybe Pillman & Austin are
in the doghouse, or maybe this is all an angle.
Ron Simmons had his shoulder fixed in surgery yesterday and should be
fine for the show, where it's expected that he'll turn heel.
In any case, on paper we've got one heck of a show possible.
- Johnny B. Badd does indeed seem to be history with WCW. Unless the
executive shake up causes him to get a new contract offer that isn't
insulting, he's probably going to leave.
- WCW is running a tournament to crown a new TV champion. Matches will air
on WCW World Wide and WCW Main Event. Some matche have already been taped.
Erik Watts --\ /-- Paul Orndorff
|--\ /--|
Johnny Gunn --/ \ / \-- 2 Cold Scorpio
|--\ /--|
Maxx Payne --\ / \ / \ /-- Tom Zenk
|--/ \ / \--|
Marcus Bagwell --/ \ / \-- Cactus Jack
|-- Final --|
Robbie Vee --\ / | \ /-- Steve Regal
|--\ / | \ /--|
Shanghi Pierce --/ \ / WCW TV \ / \-- Barbarian
|--/ Champ \--|
Vinnie Vegas --\ / \ /-- Chris Benoit
|--/ \--|
Van Hammer --/ \-- Johnny B. Badd
- WCW will air an edited mini-PPV of the 01/04/93 Tokyo Dome show. The
1:50 show will air 03/07/93 with a "cheap" price tag. Matches that
will air are:
- Great Muta vs. Masa Chono for the NWA Title
- Sting vs. Hiro Hase
- Ron Simmons vs. Tony Halme
- Genichiro Tenryu vs. Riki Choshu
- Dustin Rhodes & Scott Norton vs. Shinya Hashimoto & Masa Saito
- Jushin Riger vs. Ultimo Dragon
- Steiners vs. Hell Raisers: Hawk & Kensuke Sasaki
The match times for these matches (bell to bell) total just over 1:45.
The Muta vs. Chono match will supposedly air in its entirety on this
weekend's WCW Main Event, so it may not be on the PPV.
- Last week, I wrote "Honky Tonk Man, who was rumoured to be heading into
WCW, has surfaced in USWA recently." This week, I'll write "Honky Tonk
Man has recently left the USWA and is rumoured to be heading into WCW."
- WWF has WrestleMania on 04/04/93 at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas.
The tentative line-up looks like this:
*- Bret Hart vs. Yokozuna for the WWF Title
*- Giant Gonzales vs. Undertaker
*- Curt Hennig vs. Lex Luger
- Steiners vs. Money, Inc. for the WWF Tag Titles
- Tatanka vs. Shawn Michaels for the IC Title
- Crush vs. Doink the Clown
The "*" matches have been announced at a WWF press conference already.
There's a fair bit of talk that the tag title match will get changed, with
the Steiners losing out. It seems fairly certain that Brutus Beefcake
& Hulk Hogan will join forces, managed by Jimmy Hart, to work a tag
match at WrestleMania. The current angle seems to lead to a match
with DiBiase & I.R.S.
- As mentioned above, it looks definite that Hulk Hogan will return to
the WWF some time just before WrestleMania. As I pointed out last
week, Vince has got Hogan's little brother on the tour and has brought
Beefcake back in. Beefcake dropped Hogan's name. Hogan's movie stinks
and will be re-released in June. That leads to the following scenario:
Bret Hart drops the title to Yokozuna at WrestleMania and Hogan wins
the belt from Yokozuna some time before his movie release date. Gosh,
can you feel the xenophobic promos for Hogan-Yokozuna yet? Yokozuna
beat Duggan up, but he can beat up the Real American? Gack!
- Owen Hart & Koko Ware will be split after Koko gets injured, leaving
Owen to tag with Bret Hart a bit before WrestleMania. Maybe they'll
make the split permanent and finally use Owen right.
- Don't know if Andre the Giant was cremated yet (they couldn't find a
big enough crematorium), but there is going to be a memorial service
for him tomorrow at his ranch in Ellerbe, NC.
- E-mail TidBits: If your site has a slow feed or you don't read news
frequently enough and you want to get this posting as e-mail every week,
send me e-mail saying so.
- Videos: Response was virtually non-existant to the idea of me circulating
videos through small chains of people. If you have no idea what I'm
talking about, I've included below what I said about this last week.
The one idea I had was that the people in each chain would be sent
a highlight tape of matches from one year between 1980 and 1992, say,
with them picking the year and subsequently the matches. If there was
enough interest, this would lead to highlight tapes for the whole decade
being available and people in the different chains could trade each
other for them.
Anyhow, I'll see if anybody else has anything to say on this idea this
week and if there's near-zero interest again I'll stop talking about it.
Reposted from last week:
I've been asked by several people whether the tape I compiled at the
request of the net is still available for purchase. It is. I'll still
sell dubs only because I said I would keep it available as long as I'm
around the net. I've become more-than-slightly disenchanted with the
idea of selling tapes, though.
PLEASE DO NOT SEND AN "Add me to the video list" NOTE IN RESPONSE TO
FOLLOWING. Read to the end first.
The only other system of getting tapes distributed from those that
"have" to those that "have not" is the "chain" approach. In this
approach, I send a dub to person A on the list of recipients. He
watches it or dubs it or whatever and mails it to person B on the
list ASAP. We continue until person Z mails it back to me. This
was proposed when I made my first compilation tape, but people were
worried about being at the end of the list and having to wait to
long to see the tape, plus having to trust everybody along the way.
Of course, people with only one VCR would not be able to dub the tape
unless they rented or borrowed a second VCR. That's a problem I
can't control. We can solve the other problems by making the
distribution list very short (say 10 people) and having everybody
promise to mail the tape within two days of receiving it. We could
track the progress of the tape with an e-mail mailing list. Somebody
could still screw the rest of us, but we could castigate that person
by publicly announcing on the net what's happened - and unfortunately
killing the idea of me offering this service again. What about cost?
Well, the postage costs are shared equally among all of the people that
would get the tape. So that only leaves me. I've dished out $4.65 on
postage (Canada-to-US assumed), a few pennies on other supplies, and
time in building the tape. With that in mind, I'd ask that each person
add a "donation" to the package - with the mandatory minimum donation
being $2 - before mailing it to on the next person. Thus when the tape
comes home to me, I'll have at least $20 in the envelope, with profit
from the 10 people being at least around $13.
The big question: What if 50, 75, or 100 people want to see the tape?
The big answer: Too bad. Well, not really. I would build a list of
names interested in being involved in the process at some point. The
first tape I build would be sent to the first 10 people on the list.
When (and if?) that tape returns to me, I would put a new list of
matches on it and mail that to #11 on the list and it would go round
to #20 before returning to me. This would continue until either (i) the
tape and minimum $20 does not get returned to me (ii) I decide to stop -
sorry no guarantees that I would do this even more than once or twice.
To everybody that bothered to read this far, what is your opinion
on this? Should the same matches get sent around to everybody on the
queue or should different matches be on each tape that goes round to
the next 10 people? How should matches be chosen for the tapes?
Again, please don't send any "add me to the video list" notes - people
sending a note with that body will never get added to a list. Just
let me know your opinions on this (you can say whether you are interested,
of course, but I don't want any "junk mail").
Herb...